Colorado Cottage Food

​ Home cooks are rallying at the State Capitol today in support of a bill that would make it legal for bakers and cake-makers to sell their goods directly to consumers. The bill would require certain information to be printed on the products' labels -- and would exclude baked goods of the "medical" variety. Cooks would have to register with their county or public health agency and pay a fee of no more than $100. Read more on Latest Word.

​Jennifer Rosen had an amazing array of interests. We met her in the early '80s, when she and sister Robin Chotzinoff covered a Chippendale's show: Jenny provided the photos, Robin the words. Robin went on to provide many more words as a longtime staff writer for Westword, but we always followed Jenny's career. Make that careers.

She lasted three weeks as a corporate receptionist in Denver, then went on to work as an Appaloosa rancher, a private detective, a saddle importer, a dressage-show performer and pay-telephone magnate before she embraced the family business of writing. In the 1990s, Jenny achieved world-wide acclaim with her irreverent, informative and often hilarious wine columns, publishing two books, a wine trivia game and weekly entertainment for the 50,000 followers of her www.corkjester.com website. Her numerous awards include the 2005 James Beard Award for Internet Writing on Food, Restaurant, Beverage or Nutrition (read the winning column here).

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​The long, strange trip of Quiznos, a homegrown chain, took another turn yesterday when Avenue Capital Group, a New York hedge fund, took controlling interest in the company. Reports the Wall Street Journal, "The deal, approved by all Quiznos creditors, keeps the chain, known for toasted subs, out of bankruptcy court. Avenue, the hedge fund controlled by billionaire Marc Lasry, will invest $150 million in Quiznos as part of the deal, and convert some debt to equity. Avenue will own more than 70% of the chain."

And the founders will own none. Rick Schaden, who opened three Quiznos franchises after graduating from the University of Colorado, joined with his father, Richard, to buy the brand and its first eighteen stores in 1991. The younger Schaden served as CEO until 2007, leaving soon after his firm, Cervantes Capital, sold part of its Quiznos ownership to JP Morgan. At the time, several franchisees were suing Quiznos for failing to deliver on promised deals. Schaden returned to Quiznos as CEO in 2009, when the slide from an all-time high of 5,000 stores had already started.

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​Like bubble tea and flavor-it-yourself water, kombucha is yet another trendy liquid. It's a tea-based beverage that's fermented with yeast and bacteria, which is supposed to yield some kind of "healthful" results -- or so we've heard. Healthful or not, the stuff does give you a bit of a boost, and now Boulder-based Celestial Seasonings has rolled out a new way to up your energy: kombucha shots.

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The future Geisty's Dogg House.

​Hot dogs are haute in Cherry Creek, where The Hawt Dog & Sausage Cafe opened last week. And now Geisty's Dogg House, featuring gourmet sausages, sliders and wings, is set to open next month at 1116 13th Street on The Hill in Boulder.

The Geisty's website promises that customers can expect "an atmosphere of an old world ale house," but with a modern-day experience: Six flat screen TVs will line the restaurant/bar. In addition to hot dogs, Geisty's will be serving Colorado micro beers, mixed drinks and smoothies from 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. Monday through Sunday.

J. Wohletz

​I'll admit it: I'm stuck in the past, using a crockpot to cook meals. And I learned at chef Lynda Lacher's One Pot Cooking Class at Cherry Creek Whole Foods last night that I am guilty of many crockpot sins, the worst of which is not using a pressure cooker to cut my meal prep time down to minutes rather than hours.

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​Unless you've been trekking in the Himalayas this week, you've undoubtedly heard all about celebrity chef Paula Deen's admission that she has Type 2 diabetes. Deen is known for her signature deep-South-deep-fried-deeply-buttered cuisine, and the criticism of her condition/food/pimping diabetes drugs is almost as painful as the day after eating one of her famous doughnut burgers. She's a "greasy villain," according to Hamilton Noland, and Anthony Bourdain tweeted: "Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later." Deen probably has a pretty sore ass right now from everyone chewing on it, but we're ready to give the queen of butter sheen the benefit of the doubt.

Here are our top five reasons to get off Paula Deen's ass -- to grease it up with a stick of butter and slide right on off -- already:

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​A few hours after lunch, students across America start to get cranky. Their blood sugar plunges, their eyes glaze over, and their stomachs start to rumble. They find a quick fix in the school's vending machines by gorging themselves on greasy potato chips and sugary sodas. Energy levels skyrocket before inevitably plummeting again.

Revolution Foods is attempting to stop this unhealthy cycle by introducing new, nutritious vending machines in Colorado schools -- even before the legislature considers any new law that would dictate them.

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J. Wohletz

My affection for oatmeal is obvious.

The city of Lafayette has been hosting the Quaker Oatmeal Festival since 1996. This annual celebration starts with an oatmeal breakfast, which leads into an oatmeal baking contest, a health fair and a 5k run, and ends with hundreds of people getting plenty of fiber in their diets -- and free, full-sized cans of Quaker Oats to take home. Along the way, they can also hug a gigantic, inflatable box of oatmeal.

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John Power and Rod Dupen just opened a Boulder location.

​Waffle Brothers isn't just "serving one warm waffle at a time" to Denverites. As of late last night, Boulder fans are also basking in the sweet aroma of waffles hot off the iron.

January 12 marked the official grand opening of a Waffle Brothers store on the Hill in Boulder, a sibling to the Waffle Brothers at 303 Corona in Denver.

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